We finally got the first iteration of the MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard with integrated HYDRA controller in house and got to spend a few short hours with it.

The MSI Big Bang Fuzion Motherboard

The Big Bang Fuzion motherboard is almost identical to the previously released MSI Big Bang Trinergy motherboard in terms of layout and features with one big exception: SLI support. The Trinergy supported not only SLI but 3-Way SLI, a feature very few P55 motherboards do. The Fuzion however, does NOT support SLI officially at all. Why? That's a good question that no one wants to answer directly but we do KNOW that it is a business decision since most other P55 motherboards already do.

Before we get to our early performance testing, let's take a look at the motherboard itself.

The Fuzion motherboard has the same LGA1156 socket for Intel Lynnfield processors and uses the P55 chipset in conjunction with the HYDRA 200 chip. All three of the PCIe x16 slots on the board run through the HYDRA chip and thus when software updates occur the board will actually be able to support three card scaling. Of course, the Fuzion motherboard offers all kinds of other technologies from MSI for performance and overclocking, which we'll be looking at in more detail when we have more time, but if you want that information now, check out our MSI Big Bang Trinergy review as well.